


Shifting Skin

by torenhoog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bisexual Mary Winchester, Case Fic, Gen, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 02:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10504548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torenhoog/pseuds/torenhoog
Summary: Being alive again is not easy for Mary. She doesn’t really know how to deal with two grown sons and her longing for happier times. Killing monsters helps though. And then there are the evenings she spends with Jody, drinking and talking. (A coda to episode 12.06, or maybe more of an AU-version of one.)





	

How do time travelers do it? Maybe they never travel within their own lifespan, or only to the past. How do time travelers adapt to an era that has people and things that are nothing like how you remember them? Except for the Impala, that car still feels familiar. As long as the trunk stays closed, that wasn’t a weapons stash when it was John’s. At least not until she died. Gah, she has to stop thinking like that. Distraction is what she needs, preferably a nice hunt with a bloody ending. So when Jody calls, Mary goes to Sioux Falls. 

 

* * *

 

The body is only partially exsanguinated and it’s covered in bite marks. Mary lifts the body to inspect the backside. More bite marks. As if the thing that did this was desperate to draw blood but too erratic to find the right spot. “The wounds resemble vampire bites, but I don’t think a vampire did this.”

Jody nods. “That’s what I thought too, and that’s why I called you.” 

Mary takes off her latex gloves and throws them in a bin. “Where did they find the body?”

“I’ll show you tomorrow, it’s almost dark. You can stay at my place if you like. I even cook you dinner.”

Is that a wink? Mary is not entirely sure how to interpret Jody’s invitation. But the offer of food and bed is music to the ears of a lonely hunter who’s been on the road for a while. “I’d love to, and a home cooked meal sounds great.”

Jody’s home is cozy, a place well lived in. When Mary returns to the living room after changing out of her “believe me, I’m a Federal agent” suit, Jody is busy in the kitchen, assisted by a young, dark-haired woman with clear blue eyes. That’s how Mary meets Alex, one of Jody’s adoptive daughters. To Mary’s surprise the other one, Claire, is out hunting with Castiel. 

Jody doesn’t want to explain the connection between Castiel and Claire. “Not my story to tell, you have to ask Cas about it,” Jody says while opening the oven to check on the chicken baking inside. It looks ready to Mary, but apparently, it needs more time. 

Mary examines Alex’s face. “Are you also related to Castiel? You look a bit like him, with the color of your hair and eyes.”

Alex snorts, starts mashing the potatoes and then drily describes how she became Jody’s protégé. Mary is horrified about the lure thing. She never heard of vampires kidnapping children and using them as bait. Did that happen in her pre-death hunting days? Vampires were much rarer then. Maybe this was one of the things that gave them a chance to multiply.

Jody hands a bottle of red wine to Mary and shows her where to find the tableware.

“This chicken is amazing!” Mary’s exclamation raises a laugh from both Jody and Alex.

“So you really are Sam and Dean’s mom,” Alex says. “You don’t look old enough, more like Jody’s age.” 

“Alex, that’s rude.”

“Never mind, Jody, Alex is right. To me, it feels like Dean and Sam are older than me, not like they’re my kids. Actually, I don’t even know how old I am now, 29 or over sixty or maybe just a few months.”

“Jody tries to mommy those guys sometimes, but I don’t think they listen to her.”

“Hey, I just give them much-needed advise.”

“Like I said, mommy-ing.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that.” Mary stares at her empty plate, wondering if there’s still some chicken left in the oven.

Jody touches Mary’s arm lightly. “I know what it’s like to suddenly have big children.” And with a fond smile at Alex, “Although I wouldn’t call you or Claire grown-ups just yet.”

Alex huffs and changes the subject. “Jody, can I stay at my friend Rosa’s place while you guys work the case? I can’t be around this vampire stuff.”

“Alright. It might take a few days, I let you know when we’re done.”

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to think of the adult versions of Dean and Sam as her sons. There are moments when Mary sees echoes of John in them. How Sam can show a detached kind of curiosity. The way Dean’s face looks at a certain angle. But mostly she sees two unfamiliar men who in no way match her image of her children and wonders how she got here. She simultaneously has a strong need and no desire at all for filling in the blanks of their lives. Reading John’s journal helps, a bit, but he died a decade ago and essential parts of the story must be missing, the journal mainly describes how to recognize and kill supernatural creatures. She dreads to ask questions, afraid of finding out what her death did to John and the boys, of hearing things she’s not in any way ready to deal with.

Some of these thoughts she’s able to share with Jody, who seems to know about grief and the loss of loved ones. Jody tells her about the night her zombie son killed her husband, which turns into the story of how she met Sam and Dean. 

Mary is horrified for the second time today. “Is it always this gruesome with them?”

Jody closes her eyes for a second. “The whole walking dead thing was part of the apocalypse that was going on at that time. Bobby, Sam, Dean and Cas stopped it, I don’t know how exactly, you have to ask them about the details.” 

This is how Mary finds out her boys thwarted the ending of the world by biblical forces. Her “wait, you mean Bobby Singer?” is followed by a story about Dean and Sam saving everyone from getting eaten by some primordial creatures called Leviathans.

Mary empties their second bottle of wine while Jody fetches a new one.

“There’s another reason I called you,” Jody says. “You intrigued me at Asa’s wake, wanted to talk some more, but you left right after breakfast.”

Mary’s heart skips a beat. “Yeah, I wanted to be on my own for a while, visit some places, see if I could find people from before.” The wine is causing this giddiness, it must be. But who cares. Mary fills her glass again.

 

* * *

 

Why would a vampire hunt for food here? It’s not like droves of people walk around this place ready for the picking. Mary stares along the railroad track. The built-up part of town is about a mile that way, on this part of the track, there’s only some dispersed industrial activity. “So where exactly was the body found?”

Jody points at the bushes next to a driveway. “One of the people who work over there found it. My colleagues searched the buildings and parking lot, but they didn’t find anything suspicious.”

“That’s because they don’t know where to look.” Mary dives into the bushes. After searching for a while she finds half a footprint and calls out to Jody. Together they find more prints, broken twigs, and finally a smelly heap of slimy material mixed with clothes. Mary pokes the heap with a stick. “This looks like shapeshifter skin.” 

Jody pulls on a pair of gloves and starts examining the clothes. “No wallet or id.”

“Does this… have teeth?” Mary squats next to Jody, shoulders touching. 

Jody starts taking apart the squashed stuff near what seems a wig with skin attached. The hairs are long and dark. “No teeth. Only squishy parts. Think this is left behind by our perpetrator?”

“I don’t know, it could be something else.”

“What, _two_ monster in a town like Sioux Falls? I mean, we’ve had some shit here, but never two different nasties at the same time. That would be a first. Interesting!” 

“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself. I just hope no one else dies.”

Mary should have known that her wish for no more victims was an idle one. The day after Jody and she found the shedded skin and spent another evening talking and drinking too much wine, another dead body is found in the woodlands near the river. 

Jody orders all her colleagues to leave the crime scene. “Perks of being a small town sheriff, I get to do things my way. Besides, they wouldn’t know how to handle this monster stuff.” 

The body looks gnawed upon, especially in the chest region, as if something tried to get to the heart. The bite marks resemble those of a large canid. “There are no wolves in South Dakota, are there?”

“No, only coyotes.” Jody scans the soil around the body. “Hey, paw prints.” 

“Hm, I would say these are wolf prints,” Mary says. 

“Tell me we’re dealing with a werewolf on top of a vampire and a shapeshifter!” Jody sounds almost ecstatic. “I haven’t killed one of those yet.”

“Do you want to complete the set? You still have a way to go then, there are a lot of supernatural creatures out there.”

“Well, I got the evil goddess down.”

“Really? That’s amazing, you have to tell me all about it.” Mary would love to spend another evening in Jody’s company. Lounging on Jody’s sofa there was no pressure to be anyone but herself, as if who she was didn’t really matter. “Oh, and werewolf feet are completely different, not at all like those of a normal wolf. And a werewolf would have ripped out the heart.” She has no idea what’s doing this.

“Wait, what’s that?” Jody points at a heap that smells almost as bad as the one they found yesterday. “Snotty and hairy, nice…”

“If a wolf shifter shedded its skin, it would look like this. It could be a skinwalker, although they don’t leave skins behind as far as I know.” Really no idea at all.

“Now that’s another thing for my list. This is going to be so much fun…” Jody doesn’t sound quite as cheerful as before. “I’ve seen enough, let’s go.”

“Wait, we have to bury this before anyone else finds it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Let me get a shovel from my truck.”

 

* * *

 

After dinner Mary calls Dean, who puts her on speaker so Sam can join the discussion. She’s relieved when they don’t know what’s going on either, she didn’t lose her hunter’s instincts after all. Even Sam and Dean can’t tell if it’s one monster or more. And the library in their bunker has nothing on anything matching Jody and Mary’s findings. When the boys offer their help she assures them they don’t need to drive to Sioux Falls, she can handle the case just fine with Jody's help. Mary leaves out the bit about wanting to spend more time alone with Jody.

Mary enjoys working with Jody, is doing great without those two big lumps of her sons parading all over the place exuding self-confidence as if they’re better hunters than her. Well, they probably are the better hunters, experienced in dealing with beings she never even knew were real. They’re best friends with an angel, have the King of Hell and his mother among their contacts, reunited God with his sister. Her sons are not like the hunters she used to know before she died. Or like any hunter she met since she came back.

When Mary puts down her phone, Jody opens another bottle of wine. 

 

* * *

 

A familiar rumble distracts Mary’s from the newspaper she’s reading. Through the window, she watches the Impala drive up to Jody’s house. Damn, she thought she was very clear yesterday about not wanting their help. With a sigh, she gets up to open the front door.

”Hi boys, what are you doing here?”

“Sammy got bored, so we decided to come and help you.”

“Dude, just admit that you want to see Cas.”

“And Jody and Claire and Alex, yeah, sure.” Dean turns to Mary. “Where is everyone?”

“I haven’t seen Castiel and Claire, they’re hunting a ghost somewhere in Montana. Jody’s at work and Alex is staying with a friend.”

There’s a fleeting look of disappointment on Dean’s face. ”Do I smell coffee?”

”I made a big pot about twenty minutes ago, there’s still some left.” Mary stares at Dean when he walks to the kitchen and takes his phone out of his pocket. When she hears him say “hey Cas” she turns back to Sam. “I guess we have to tell Jody she has more visitors.”

”I already called her. She told us we could find you here at the house. Sorry we’ve come unannounced like this, I really hope you don’t mind. Dean was right, we do have nothing better to do, and it’s always nice to visit Jody.”

Mary agrees he has a point there. “Well, since you’re here you might as well make yourselves useful.”

Dean returns to the living room. “Let’s grab lunch first, I’m starving.” 

Dean shares his theory over burgers and fries (and a salad for Sam). “I think it’s all the same thing, one monster mimicking others. Sam, remember that shapeshifter that turned itself into movie monsters?”

“Yeah, with that fake dungeon. You were adorable in those lederhosen.”

“Shut up, you know I don’t do shorts.”

“Sure, then what did you wear -”

“Guys, do you really think we’re dealing a shapeshifter?" Lederhosen? Mary hates it when they do this, casually dropping things like that, it reminds her of how big a part of their lives she missed. "I never heard of one feeding on humans and shedding animal skin.”

“What happens when a shapeshifter gets bitten by a werewolf? Or a vampire?” Dean wonders.

“Skinwalkers switch between human and animal form without the shedding of skin, so that doesn’t fit either.” Sam says. 

“And it doesn’t explain the vampire-like bite marks on the first victim.” Mary says

“Maybe it’s a hybrid between a shapeshifter and a skinwalker, both can have children so why not together. A shapewalker, no wait, skinshifter sounds better. A skinshifter bitten by a werepire. A wereskinshiftpire!” Dean seems rather pleased with this. “Wolfskinshiftvamp?”

Mary rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what you call it, we just have to kill it.”

“OK so how do we kill a wolfskinshiftpire?“

“Dude, we just throw everything at it: silver bullets, angel blade, wooden stake, flare gu-”

“Grenade launcher!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you always…”

Mary uses her ringing phone as an excuse to get away from her sons’ bickering. It’s Jody calling about another dead body. Mary volunteers to put on her FBI suit and visit the morgue, hoping Jody will also be there. Dean and Sam drive over to where the body was found.  

Dinner conversation that evening starts with comparing notes. Mary reports that the victim looks like they’ve been mauled by a bear. Sam and Dean found another skin, one that Sam describes as “a bear skin rug drenched in mucus“. As there are definitely no bears in South Dakota, this reinforces Dean’s skinshifter theory. There’s nothing new to say about the case so they change topics soon after. Jody insists there’s plenty of space for Sam and Dean to sleep at her house. Mary listens to the heroic adventures of Jody the Hunter as told by Dean with a running commentary by Sam. Jody goads Dean into admitting out loud that he loves chick flicks, which leads to Sam sharing his favorite embarrassing Dean anecdotes, followed by Mary and Dean trying to outdo each other with sappy stories about baby Sam that make Jody howl with laughter. They all get pleasantly drunk.

 

* * *

 

Mary wakes up to the smell of fried bacon. She finds Dean in the kitchen making pancakes to go with the bacon, fills a cup from the pot of coffee and plops down at the table sipping the hot liquid. Ten minutes later Dean puts a plate filled with food in front of her and sits down across the table with a plate of his own. Mary watches him eat for a moment before she takes her first bite. “This is good!” 

Dean grins. “Hey, I can cook.” Then his smile falters. “Sorry Mom, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“At least one of us knows how to prepare food.” Mary regrets having crushed his image of her as a great cook. Regrets him having that image in the first place. 

Seeing a grown Sam for the first time was even a bigger shock than meeting Dean. In Dean, she recognizes traces of the four-year-old she left behind. Sam was only a baby when she died and now he’s a giant and a complete stranger to her. Dealing with Sam, on the other hand, is easier than talking to Dean. With Sam, it's like they’re building a connection from scratch. Dean makes her feel as if she’s battling an idealized version of herself, a Mary she doesn’t recognize at all.

“Mom, you want more bacon?”

“No thanks, I’m good. Where's Jody? And Sam?”

“Jody got a call from her office, they brought in a girl who was hiding in a barn or something. Sam is with her to check on the girl.”

Mary takes a few more bites. These pancakes are really good. “When did you know?”

Dean looks puzzled. “Know what?”

“That you liked men.”

“Who… how did you find out?”

“Don’t you have a thing for Castiel?”

“Wh... what… makes you think that?”

“The way you stare at each other for one. And how you always hover around each other when you’re in the same room. It looks like there’s something going on between you two.”

“We’re not together, like _together_ together… Don’t know if that’s even possible.” Dean scrutinizes Mary's face as if he’s trying to figure something out. “It’s complicated. And I like women too. Why d'y’ask?”

Mary hesitates. “It’s Jody, I feel something I’ve never felt before.” A memory of her friend Liddy’s face bathing in golden afternoon light bubbles to the surface. Oh. “It’s not what I felt for your dad, but it’s not friendship either. I thought since you… with Cas… you would understand.”

“Mom, sure you wanna talk to me about this? This is really weird.”

“I don’t know anyone else who’s homosexual, or what’s it called when you like men _and_ women. And everything with you and Sam is strange, so… But what do you mean, it’s complicated? Being attracted to a man?”

“Nothing complicated about that, about being bisexual. Well, apart from the need of _some_ people to pass judgement. No, what Cas and I have is complicated, a tangled mess of… A lot has happened between us and it wasn’t all rainbows and puppies. You know, you’re the first person to ask me about this. Not even Sammy knows.”

“I’m sure he has at least an inkling of your feelings for Cas. they’re rather obvious you know. But when did you...”

“Oh, eh... I always kinda knew I liked boys, even before I discovered girls were interesting too. But I didn’t know bisexuality was a thing until I was like twenty and had the chance to ransack the internet. Dad used to say I was a healthy boy with a healthy interest in girls. He was not wrong, but I never told him about the things I did with guys, he would’ve… Can I ask you something about Dad? Was he already a homophobic bastard when you met him?” 

Mary blinks. “Wow, that’s pretty harsh.” John wasn’t a bad father, was he? “Actually I wouldn’t know. The Lawrence I grew up in, at least my circle of family and friends, was very straight. And the whole flower power summer of love sailed right past us.”

“Oh yeah, I can imagine what Samuel Campbell would’ve thought of a queer daughter.”

“You know my father?! How? He died before John and I got married.”

“We didn’t tell you? Crowley raised him from the dead a few years back. From Hell to be precise. He… hell no, I don’t wanna talk about Samuel right now.”

“Wait, tell me one thing, is he still alive?” 

“He died on a hunt. You get the story later, Sam knows the main plotline best.” Dean’s phone rings. “Speaking of… hey Sammy, what’s up?”

 

* * *

 

The girl from the barn is a vampire. She was sired about a week ago and when she became desperate for blood, she bit a woman with brown skin and black curly hair. A description that doesn’t get them any closer to finding a shape-changing creature, but fits the first skin Jody and Mary found. The interesting part of the girl’s story is where the woman bites the girl before running away. The girl has been feeling ill ever since and hasn’t bitten anyone else, her bloodlust replaced by nausea and fever.

“So she’s not the killer of the first victim,” Jody says.

“You know what I think? The woman she bit is our skinshifter and it turned into a skinshiftpire.”

“Dean, you forgot the werewolf part.”

“No Sam, don’t make it more complicated than necessary.”

“Dude, you’re the one who likes to make up those ridiculous monster names.”

 Again Mary wants to roll her eyes at her sons. Instead, she says, “Boys, we still have to find that skinshifter and kill it. Any suggestions?”

“Search the location of the bilateral biting,” Jody says, “I know where it is.”

“What happens to the girl?” Mary is averse to killing her, she looks so young, she didn’t ask to become a vampire and hasn’t hurt any humans.

Dean frowns. “Do you think she can still be cured? Does skinshifter blood have the same effect as human blood? Finish the turning process I mean.”

“Dude, according to your skinshiftpire theory she has to be a certified vampire.”

“Damn, you’re right.”

“She can stay in the holding cell for now,” Jody says.

Dean hands out silver bullets. “Carry a machete from now on, or whatever tool you like for chopping off heads.”

 

* * *

 

Why is it always an abandoned warehouse? This particular warehouse is owned by the person whose ID Mary found on the scene of the biting, as is the car parked outside. Now the four of them are sneaking around a big gloomy space trying to find a monster. Sam has already stepped into a foul heap of slimy fur. When they reach a staircase, Mary and Jody go up.

Upstairs Mary switches on her flashlight, it’s too dark to see anything without some extra light. This floor is divided into small rooms with a narrow corridor in between. Jody signals she’s taking the rooms on the left, so Mary enters the first room on the right. Empty, just like the next room. In the third room, she finds a mattress and a sleeping bag. Then she hears a thud and running feet. Back in the corridor, she sees a shadow moving down the stairs. Is that Jody? Why did she turn off her flashlight? No wait, there’s light shining from one of the rooms on Jody’s side of the corridor. There she finds Jody sitting on the floor.

Jody looks slightly stunned. “The damn thing hit me before I even saw it.”

Mary takes Jody’s arm to help her get up and lets her hand linger at Jody’s back. At the sound of a gunshot downstairs, they hurry back to the staircase. At the foot of the stairs, Mary whispers to Jody to stay put, keep her gun ready and make sure nobody goes back up. 

Mary finds Sam behind one of the crates scattered at this end of the warehouse. “Who shot? Where’s Dean?”

“Dean did, he’s somewhere over there.”

“Hiding behind these crates is useless. We have to chase the skinshifter back to the staircase, Jody is waiting there ready to shoot.”

Dean is squatting behind the second crate they sneak up to. Sam and Mary hunker down next to him and Sam softly asks where the shifter is.

“Around, I don’t know, it hid when I shot. I fuckin’ missed." Even whispering Dean sounds annoyed.

Mary rises. “Spread out and start looking for the thing. If you see it, shoot and make sure it heads in the direction of the stairs.” And, as a reply to Dean’s questioning look, “That’s where Jody is.”

Dean nods and starts jogging to the right. Sam takes the left. Mary goes straight ahead. When something jumps away from her she sprints after it, trying to get a good view. Is that a gorilla? It has the height and gait of a human male though. It’s running towards the warehouse entrance but gets intercepted by Dean who swings his fist at its head. Dean misses because the creature turns around swiftly, only to find Sam shooting at it, so it changes course again. They keep on blocking it until it moves within Jody’s line of sight. The first of Jody’s silver bullets hits the shifter in the head, the third and fourth in the heart. Mary swings her machete before the creature hits the ground. It really looks like a gorilla. Its severed head is kept from rolling further away by Dean’s left foot. Sam drives an angel blade through the skinshifter’s heart, even if it’s most likely dead by now. Then they salt and burn the bloody remains.

 

* * *

 

Jody’s deputy informs her that the vampire girl is dead. “He said she died puking all her guts out as green goo. The skinshifter blood must have slowly been poisoning her. Poor girl.” Jody’s voice contains a hint of sorrow. 

Jody must be thinking of Alex right now. Mary touches Jody’s wrist just long enough to let Jody know she’s there.

“Yeah, and her blood made the skinshifter go bonkers,” Dean says.

Sam and Dean decide to head back home to the bunker now there’s nothing left to do casewise. 

“But no whining when we’re stopping for cheeseburgers at that place, you know.” 

“No Dean, I don’t know, many places serve burgers.”

“Mom, we know you need time, or space, or both, or wh-“ 

“But when you’re ready there’s a place for you at the bunker, you know that, right?” Sam wraps his long arms around Mary and gives her a hug. 

Unwilling to say what she really wants Mary responds with a vague “hmm”. 

Jody gazes at Mary. “Wanna come back to my place and stay another night?” 

Mary catches a wink from Dean. “I’d love to, but first let me buy a few bottles of wine.” Tomorrow she’ll probably ask Jody if she can stay a bit longer.

 

 


End file.
